The game is great, I have to say it is the most intricate and detailed game of checkers I’ve ever played.

What I mean by that, if you read the title of the post, is that it is not a war game in feel or purpose, but really is a complex game of checkers where three interchangeable classes, literally if you find a fallen backpack, fight over five strategic points on a map. Dying is only a momentary annoyance, but it would be worse if it were anything else in a multiplayer game. I like the game don’t get me wrong, but that is all it is, a game.

Regardless of a few fleeting moments it ends up being a games of checkers and wack-a-mole. In fact I think I can extend that to any game purporting to be about war. As noted over at Experience Points, and HitSelfDestruct there is an absence in civilians that would engender certain consideration on a real battlefield. Beyond that I find that a majority of games with a war backdrop put you in the position of an Ubermench, a super soldier that would put Captain America to shame. You take over entire enemy bases, kill entire divisions and disrupt the manufacture of war machines that could turn the tide of battles.

For power fantasies like those that try to emulate 80s action films that’s fine and expected, but most of these games have their influence in real life conflicts (eg. World War II games) or base their fictional conflict on the machinations of real conflicts (eg. Killzone 2 being World War II in Space).

Medal of Honor: Frontline, a classic in the World War II shooter sub genre, hold to a realistic depiction of the war with the first few levels with the storming of the Normandy beaches and assault on the bunkers, but once that is over the game sends you on a number of solo missions to disrupt major military instillation behind enemy lines.

I wonder if it is possible to have a reasonable war game that puts you in the shoes of a real soldier. With the constraints that the player has to be able to succeed and for something to be happening on screen at all times that the player can have an effect on, it seems unlikely.

In narrative games, the player has to win. Any losses are experienced through cutscenes after the player has achieved victory in the game itself. The reason there is no game where you play a Nazi is less to do with the moral ambiguity of the premise and more to do with the fact that they LOST THE WAR. A player doesn’t play to lose, so they cannot play the losing side of a conflict unless you are going to allow them to play with the facts of history like some RTSs do or have that loss portrayed in an end of game cutscene to show despite all their efforts they still lost.

Also, the concept that the player has to have an effect on the game world is not an unreasonable one; it is the basis of the entire medium. In a firefight, for example, it is very reasonable to have the player shooting enemies, have an effect on the outcome of the firefight. But in a war game that tries to be about the conflict itself, it seems to translate that the individual player, a normal soldier, having an effect on the outcome of the war. I can understand how that might work in a strategy game where you are taking the role of a Commander or General, but it is far fetched to think that an individual private’s efforts will determine the outcome of the sociopolitical sphere of the western world.

Then there is the fact that in a medium about interaction. War, at first glance, seems like a great place to set the game, until you realize what war actually is. War is long bouts of boredom interrupted by a few moments of sheer terror.  Are you going to have long bouts of boredom in a video game? No. The game has to cherry pick the moments of action a soldier would feel and we understand that as the nature of the medium. Therefore it is about how those moments are portrayed. Unfortunately, with regularity, war video games are an extension of the power fantasy video games. They put military actions up on a pedestal and glorify war. The glory to be had isn’t even in the vein of the Homeric epic where it is in death and being immortalized that glory is gained, but in the vein of Hollywood bad asses where it is earned from victory and being able to laugh in the distance at their fallen foes.

To put it simplistically, war video games are more The Green Berets, than All Quiet on the Western Front or Platoon or Apocalypse Now. Hell I’d even take the Saving Private Ryan version of a war video game. I would like to see something that recognizes or acknowledges the horrors and realizations of war rather than glorifying it.

I put it to designers like this: a soldier has few tools and uses them as trained when deployed, it is up to intelligent men to deploy the soldier intelligently. Or to put it in terms of video games, the player has few tools and will use them and it is up to the designers to set the situation and tone of the game. The message can be delivered and like everything else in video games it is going to be from the presentation.

So, yes I will continue to play my game of virtual World War II checkers, but I don’t want to be one of the few people left that realize war is hell before going into battle. There is more anti-war media in every other medium for a reason. War is not pleasant, war is not fun and I worry that if video games don’t find a way to deal with it beyond mechanical interface that we will be left behind.

The name of the site is what it is, because when I was setting up everything I needed a site name and URL. I couldn’t come up with anything decent that wasn’t already in use. A friend of mine, who coincidentally is also the man who set up most of the behind the scenes infrastructure and my editor over at the CreativeFluff design blog, suggested GameCritique.com. A straight to the point name and almost a mission statement unto itself. It was taken. TheGameCritique.com was not. I laughed at the time that the name made me sound overly pretentious and I even wrote, when introducing it elsewhere, that you could not find a more pretentious name. Recently after a talk with Corvus Elrod on IRC some months ago that rather than the name be ridiculed or chuckled at as I thought it would be, I was being taken more seriously and it seemed more was expected because of the name than I was delivering or could. In other words to some people the name of the site made them think I had the answers. I’m sure most of you think that that isn’t the case, but I think the name is subconsciously affecting the people I discuss and debate with.

Which in the most roundabout way to lead me to my point. I do not know everything or really much of anything. If you second-guess me, then you can be sure that I am second guessing myself. I am learning on the job as it were. Back in November I could not have argued the thematic relevance in Prince of Persia, in January when I wrote that post I could not have argued and defended my theory of populous power in Beyond Good and Evil and when I wrote that one I’m sure I could not argue whatever is coming up next. I am continuing to evolve, so yes it may always be ‘I can’t wait to see where it goes.’ Doesn’t make it any less annoying that it’s always about where I’m going and never arriving.

However, I do take criticism and I like to think I take it well. I am going to address a few of criticism of my site.

QWERTY is now on indefinite hiatus. While previous entries had some point behind them, mostly ridiculing the argument of the week. Though this was lost on a lot of people, as he never gave context or back information for the satire, a problem in itself. And at the end of his run he wasn’t even trying and wasting my time as well as yours. I said at the beginning it was an experiment and was on a trial basis. The trial is over and QWERTY is done.

I have been told I have a fear that some bloggers have of giving specific examples. This has mainly to do with the fear of spoiling stories for people. I don’t like it to happen to me and I transmit that desire to others. When talking directly to a single person I can limit myself to what is necessary, because I either know or can ask if they’ve played a game and/or how far they’ve gotten. On the internet, however, anyone can read it and understandably it causes more fear of spoiling anything. It’s never been brought to my attention that I was doing this, so yes I will make an effort to stop doing that.

Finally the comment that made me think the most, and gets at the heart of what I want this post to express. I was told I don’t cover design aspects of a game when talking about them. This comment to me was saying that somehow I was doing it wrong. That my criticism was weak or invalid for not talking about them. Two things, one in certain arguments the design may have nothing to do with the argument. Secondly I rarely do arguments that have to do with design. I don’t feel I know not enough about it to discuss it intelligently.  Plus, when I do focus on it, I have an agreement that such posts go to CreativeFluff.com.

Which leaves me to explain what is left for this site. I said before I am an English major, that is how I will approach TheGameCritique. I look at video games as cultural artifacts. I look at them from the culture and creator that produced them. I look at the work to see what it is saying about the world and culture around it. Video games are the next art medium that is a fact. What that means or what it will look like when it comes to pass is another matter and another discussion entirely. My critique is not about is it good or bad, but what and why.

It is important to know where a critic is coming from when they critique otherwise they’re just sound bites. Critics do come from somewhere and look at things in certain ways. If anything I think I focus on Animist and Iconoclast nature of criticism. That will loosely associate with the bottom right and top right respectively in the graph above. I leave Classicist and Formalist readings to others.

Thank you for putting up with me for the last thousand or so words. I needed to get that out of the way before I can continue on and get back to work. If it got a little too ivory tower there at the end I apologize, but links to the various terms are provided if needed.

]]> http://www.thegamecritique.com/recent-posts/what-do-i-do-here/403/feed/ 8 http://www.thegamecritique.com/recent-posts/killzone-2-commercial/188/ http://www.thegamecritique.com/recent-posts/killzone-2-commercial/188/#comments Wed, 04 Mar 2009 07:04:41 +0000 Eric Swain http://www.thegamecritique.com/?p=188 Here’s a little design analysis piece I did for Creative Fluff design blog on the Killzone 2 commercial. Sony took the marketing in a different direction and are actually getting behind the game. See what I thought of it.

Here’s a little design analysis piece I did for Creative Fluff desgin blog on the Killzone 2 commercial. Sony took the marketing in a different direction and are actually getting behind the game. See what I thought of it.

Killzone 2 Commercial piece

Read it here: Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune – a critique